<USS Cervantes> "Flight Toward"

Chronology note: This log takes place after Rain Dance Pt II.
 
"Flight Toward"
Ashne'e Al Kiara
Special Guest Stars: Kennedy Rhune, Saskia Lar, Chase Mallory
 
            It should have been different.
            There should have been a dissolve like a movie. The
Khefiraan society should have lingered for a moment in stillness, then
become transparent slowly, first like a ghost, then a looking glass,
until the shadow of the ruins whispered through its fading solidity. The
ruins should have crept gently as a lover past his sleeping maid. When
they finally appeared, like the reality replacing the mirage of an
oasis, it should have been with quiet, knowing grace, a young wife's
smile.
            At the very least there should have been showiness and
sizzle with lightning strikes and tilting lines, and the bastardization
of geometry, all backed by bright colors. Blue would have been perfect -
a cobalt blue, the dark color of old glass, that impossible shade rivers
aspire to without a prayer of ever achieving. Cobalt blue with garish
flashing lights and vertigo would have been wonderful.
            One moment there was Khefiraa, alive.
            The next moment, there was Khefiraa, dead.
            There was no transition. There was no afterimage of the
first view superimposed onto the second as the fading visual memory
disappeared.
            One moment there was Khefiraa, alive.
            The next moment, there was Khefiraa, dead.
            It took everyone several seconds to digest this.
            Once the knowledge had become acceptable, if not palatable,
there was still a dead Ss'thla and five live humanoids. Surrounding
them, there were many questions.
            "We found him a few meters that way," Lar said, nodding
towards a large expanse of sand where the Khefiraan's majestic buildings
had just stood. Her voice sounded different, more hollow, without the
perfect marble that had would have given it depth in echo only a few
minutes earlier. "There's no way to tell how he died, but I think we
should assume it was murder. And there was another one trying to make a
child into a statue, just like the older female in the temple. Mallory
attacked him; we left the Ss'lytha'a injured." She paused, and her voice
sounded almost like an accusation as she glanced over at her fellow
officer, who was trying not to breathe too hard. "I can't treat him
here."
            Ashne'e let her gaze linger on Mallory before she nodded.
"Have Koe beam you both up."
            "They're turning these cats into statues," Mallory choked
out. Even bowed over double to protect his injuries, he could fill his
voice with enough venom to slay a rat at twenty paces. "That's pretty
fucked up. What are we, supposed to let 'em do it because we ain't the
APA?"
            Ashne'e turned her head toward Kennedy, who nodded as the
same thought crossed both their minds at once. 
            "The Ss'thla," Kennedy affirmed, aloud. "The mural said they
learned the religious rite."
            "We'll take care of it," Ashne'e said. "We'll do what we
can. They aren't Federation; we can't force them to abide by our laws.
Go back to the ship. All three of you. There's no reason for you to stay
here."
            "What do we do with the corpse?" asked Lar.
            "Leave it." Ashne'e felt no affinity for the green, scaled
thing. It failed to evoke even the same pity as a squirrel lying dead in
the middle of the road. "His people may want to recover his body."
            Lar shrugged. She bent over Mallory, tapped her badge, and
murmured something too low for Kennedy and Ashne'e to hear. A few
seconds later, the three of them were gone.
            Ashne'e twined her fingers around the butt end of the phaser
rifle within her cloak. "Somehow, my trust for our hosts is gone. One
dead Ss'thla, at least. Another one attacking a member of my crew."
            Kennedy gave her knife-hilt shrug. "You said yourself we
can't stop them. So let's just leave then."
            "Maybe we can't stop them, but I want to know what's going
on. If we can do anything for that culture."
            "What're they going to do if we get rid of the Ss'thla?"
Kennedy was sweeping a fine layer of sand off the once-grand dais with
her boot, ineffectively spreading it around. "Think their gods don't
favor them? Burn everything? Think their gods do favor them? Burn
everything?"
            Idly, Ashne'e wondered whether Kennedy saw the statues as
half-dead or half-alive. Her bet would have been on half-dead. "What I
don't understand is why they're doing this at all."
            "Sadistic bastards."
            "It doesn't make any sense to come to study a culture, and
then rape what you find."
            Kennedy's boot intersected with a shiny, black stone, and it
skittered across the dais with the noise of a prayer wheel. "Happens all
the time. Find a big temple, stare at it with your jaw open. Find a
bunch of pliable Indians and - whoo! Slave force!"
            "No." 
            The Ss'thla'an culture seemed too internally motivated, too
xenophobic to deal with other races as prey. Instead, she believed they
would have fled the situation, which begged the question: Why were they
archaeologists at all? Ssarish and Hisaj aside, and they a minority of a
minority, the few intellectually curious among those who had voluntarily
elected an isolated post, the Ss'thla seemed more duty-bound than
curious, the kind of workers who would diligently separate a mass of
ashes from a mass of lentils without bothering to wonder about the
usefulness of either.
            "We're missing something."
            Kennedy snorted. "Welcome to Archaeology."
             "That's why it isn't my field," agreed Ashne'e in soft, low
tones. "It always infuriated me, the tantalizing mysteries with answers
that flitted out of sight, and would never be solved."
            "Sometimes we solve them," Kennedy protested, in defense of
her vocation. She shrugged again, but it had less of the knife and more
of the feline stretch.
            "We have to find Ciardan, McKnight and Bell. I want to stay
off the communications system. Use your tricorder."
            "They're due East." Kennedy pointed at a path that led
straight through the impassable rubble. "We'll have to walk around." She
started down the path, paused, fretted at a prickle of sweat piercing
the nape of her neck, then threw off the black cloak in a single, fluid
motion. "Too damn hot." She folded it over her arm, and shook her hair
free, letting the arid air ventilate her skin. "Or did you want to try
to fool the Ss'thla into thinking we're their digmates, only someone
chopped three feet off us in the night?"
            Carefully removing and folding her own cloak, Ashne'e shook
her head. "Mallory wounded one of them. They know we're here."
            They started picking their way through the wreckage
carefully. A misstep sliced through Ashne'e's sole, but she shook out
her boot and kept walking. The sand beneath was almost as vicious as the
shards beside.
            Kennedy, with her long legs, navigated the tiny spaces of
safety like a gazelle in comparison to Ashne'e's halting, tortoise-like
gait.
            "Lucky thing you didn't send me back with the others," she
snorted as she held Ashne'e's arm while the woman was forced into a
balletic leap.
            "I couldn't," Ashne'e admitted. "You fly the shuttle. If the
Cervantes has to put her shields up, we'll need it."
            "Glad you thought of everything." Kennedy lifted a
relatively intact piece of mural up so that the hieroglyphics sprinkling
its underbelly were visible. Ashne'e thought she saw a glimpse of flames
dazzling the shoulders of a god-like figure, like epaulets tossed upward
in a strong wind. She set it reverently aside in a flat patch of sand,
facing downward to protect the paint and etching. "Because there they
are," Kennedy continued, gesturing to the East with her head. Dimly,
Ashne'e could make out a group of black figures surrounded by white
buildings, like a stand of trees in a clearing. "And there are Ss'thla
with them."

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